Reading her biography from prepared remarks, he came to the part that noted she had grown up in a middle-class Jewish family. Then he stopped and turned to her. “I didn’t know you were Jewish, Barbra,” he said with mock astonishment.

He went on to describe how Ms. Streisand went to her first Broadway show at age 14 and thought that she could play any of the roles. “That’s what’s called chutzpah,” Mr. Obama said with a grin. Then he noted her achievements as a performer and advocate. “I’m getting all verklempt just thinking about it,” he said.

In a time of perpetual terrorism, war and crisis, Mr. Obama seemed to be enjoying a rare opportunity to deliver good news. Ms. Streisand was one of 17 people he honored that day with the nation’s highest civilian award. Indeed, Mr. Obama has come to enjoy his power to issue the medal so much that he has awarded more than any other president.

With November’s ceremony, Mr. Obama brought to 94 the number of medals he has awarded, passing Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, according to a new study. With a year still to go in office, it is a fair bet he will add more. And why not? It is one exercise of unilateral executive power that draws little or no complaint from Congress or the courts.

“This is a fun kind of busy right here,” Mr. Obama, perpetually busy, said as he opened last month’s ceremony.

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President Bill Clinton presented Bob Dole with the award in January 1997, months after defeating him in the presidential election.CreditPaul Hosefros/The New York Times

Under the executive order that established it, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is bestowed at the president’s discretion to “any person who has made an especially meritorious contribution” to national security, world peace or “cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”

The medal’s history dates to 1963, when John F. Kennedy inaugurated the honor. In the years after World War II, an earlier version, called simply the Medal of Freedom, was issued to those who had performed a service in war or for national security and was handed out not just by presidents but a variety of government officials. Kennedy wanted something broader, a way of marking contributions not just to security but to the arts, academia and public service — and reserved only for the president to bestow.

In inaugurating the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Kennedy selected the first recipients, but a disagreement over the design of the medal delayed the ceremony until after his assassination in November 1963. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, went ahead with the event the next month and added Kennedy posthumously to the list as well as his widow, Jacqueline Kennedy. Mrs. Kennedy declined the medal.

Since then, presidents have used the medal for varying purposes. Sometimes they have selected recipients who make a symbolic point on a favorite policy. Sometimes they have rewarded political allies. Sometimes they have indulged their personal fascination with celebrities and artists.

A study to be published soon in the New England Journal of Political Science examined the first half-century of the medal, from 1963 to 2013, and found that 27 percent of them went to figures from politics or public service; 15 percent to artists, actors and musicians; and 14 percent to leaders in academia or science. Nearly 10 percent of medals were awarded posthumously (like to Yogi Berra most recently), and nearly 7 percent went to foreigners (Nelson Mandela, Tony Blair).

At times, presidents have reached out across the aisle: Reagan awarded the medal to Eunice Kennedy Shriver, from the nation’s most prominent Democratic dynasty. Mr. Clinton gave one to Bob Dole as a consolation prize just two months after beating him in the 1996 election. George W. Bush honored Donna E. Shalala, the former health and services secretary. Mr. Obama selected his predecessor’s father, the first George Bush. But those are the exceptions, according to the study.

“Overwhelmingly, Republican presidents tend to bestow medals on Republican elected officials, and the same thing for the Democrats,” said Kyle C. Kopko, a professor at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania and one of the authors of the study. “Even though there might be some bipartisanship in recognizing public officials on the other side of the aisle, still by far they’re recognizing folks inside their own political party.”

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President George W. Bush gave the honor to George J. Tenet, the former director of the C.I.A., in 2004.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

Moreover, sometimes presidents make choices that are provocative.

The younger Mr. Bush, defying critics of the Iraq war, honored George J. Tenet, the longtime C.I.A. director, who developed the intelligence case against Saddam Hussein; Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander who led the initial invasion of Iraq; and L. Paul Bremer III, the viceroy who ran the country after the fall of Hussein. Mr. Bush’s selection of Bill Cosby was not debated at the time, but now some are calling for the honor to be revoked after accusations of sexual misconduct by Mr. Cosby.

More broadly, Republicans and Democrats seem to gravitate toward recipients from different sectors of society.

Indeed, Republicans gave 5 percent of their medals to military leaders, compared with 2 percent of Democrats’ honorees. Democrats gave 8 percent of their medals to civil rights leaders, compared with 1 percent of Republican honorees. Both Democrats and Republicans gave more than 80 percent of their medals to men, but Democrats have picked nonwhite recipients 23 percent of the time, compared with 16 percent of Republican selections.

Mr. Kopko said the study had originated out of curiosity about how presidents used their executive power to promote their causes and themselves. To conduct the study, he teamed up with the dean of faculty at Elizabethtown, E. Fletcher McClellan; Christopher J. Devine, a professor at Mount Vernon Nazarene University; and Jillian E. Casey and Julia L. Ward, students at the Georgetown University Law Center.

While others have studied the use of pardon power and the proliferation of so-called signing statements, which presidents attach to bills to suggest they may not enforce some aspects they deem unconstitutional, Mr. Kopko and his partners looked at the wide discretion presidents have in bestowing the freedom medals. They found no real evidence that such award ceremonies affect short-term approval ratings, concluding that presidents are thinking more long term.

But they did find that presidents have been presenting medals to more honorees at a time and often at times when their approval ratings were falling.

“It’s reasonable to infer from that that they’re targeting it toward times when they need the pick-me-up,” Mr. Devine said. “They’re going for more and more for these larger ceremonies.”

And then there are legacies to think of. Presidents are five times as likely to award medals at the end of their terms as they are at any other time in office. So expect Mr. Obama to get verklempt a lot over the next 13 months.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 13 of the New York edition with the headline: Medal of Freedom Says Something About Its Presenter, Too. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe